The Sun, The Stars, & The Sea
by medleypond
Summary: The raggedy man and his Pond reflect upon each other's company on their fabled trip to Space Florida. (A requested one-shot Amy/Eleven. Short, wistful, but not sad per se.)


There are few worse things, Amy decides, than being ginger under sunshine.

At first she refused to even step out from the glass veranda onto the sand, knowing she'd have to slather herself with lotion and God knows what it does to her complexion, fair Scottish rose that she is — or bramble, she thinks grumpily, might be a better analogy.

But he convinced her, like he always does; not that she needed it much, if she was honest, not when there's _automatic sand,_ the ground emitting a dull hum every few minutes to bring forth a fresh layer of the minuscule rock shards beneath their feet. ("That's what it is, sand!" he says eagerly, rubbing some between his palms, "we are sitting on the remains of _mountains,_ Amelia, think about it! Practically _gods_! "

Amy doesn't tell him that mandatory sun goggles — not glasses, _goggles_ — and the fact of being at least five decades younger than the majority of the beach-goers doesn't make her feel godlike, it just makes her feel… silly.)

Still, Space Florida is much more Florida than Space — she expected literal star-studded beaches, strange futuristic palm trees, rather than the blue-and-beige seascape she's seen in brochures even back home.

And she knows she shouldn't complain, she's in _Space Florida_ for heaven's sake, except sweat is starting to collect in an uncomfortable pool where her spine meets her tailbone; she's kept her T-shirt on since they arrived, cowed a little by the rest of the beachgoers in their floral prints and khakis. _Tourists,_ she thinks, _the same in every galaxy._

In one blinding moment where she can barely breathe anymore, she lets out a harrumph and pulls the T-shirt over her head.

"What are you doing?" His voice is wary, like he's approaching a sleeping beast.

"What do you think?" She wads the shirt into a ball and throws it right into his face; the split second in which the muscles around his nonexistent eyebrows move up to his hairline before the shirt hits him is better than any view she's seen today. She frowns down at her blinding-white skin. That, on the other hand, is not so lovely a view.

She has an idea then, childish and deliciously stupid; she leans over to the orange plastic bottle the TARDIS dug up for her (she's still a bit nervous about how old the stuff is) and swats it over to him. "Oi. Help me, would you?" She feels suddenly almost animalistically aware — of the way her shoulder bones jut out just a tad crookedly, of the moisture still beading along her spine.

And she is most certainly aware of the one, two, three times he has to clear his throat before answering. "With what?" God, even his voice is ten shades of shy, and she can't help grinning (and thanking the powers that be that he can't see).

"Sunblock, stupid. We gingers don't exactly get toasty." She leans back on her wrists, as a push; the sun _is_ starting to beat down a little, and she wasn't kidding, she has the burn time of a penny match.

She almost jumps at the first touch of his fingers. Not because he's particularly shocking, far from it, he's only just grazing her skin, it seems; she feels the sunblock go across her back in cool stripes, first along the slope of her shoulders, then between the blades…

He hesitates when he reaches the string of her bikini top, and something electric seems to hover in the lazy space-summer air around them. It must only be a second between the hesitation and the moment he moves to the skin just below it, but that second stretches in Amy's mind, seems to scorch her more than any sunlight ever could.

She decides he's a sun all on his own, the way the universe seems to follow him, trancelike; so does she, but she'd like to think she has some pull of her own. A star or the like, the kind that dies in a spectacular light show of the cosmos.

God, maybe she waited too long for the sunblock and it's going to her head. She needs a swim. Now.

* * *

He watches her giggle in the water, the waves cooing and tickling on their way past — even the water is drawn to her, he thinks wryly (choosing to ignore for the moment that sentient tides are a Space Florida attraction). The world does indeed seem to revolve around Amelia Pond, mad, impossible Amy — she doesn't make sense, none of her, not the hair somewhere between crimson and a flame, not the legs that seem to stretch farther than any span of time, the impish laugh that escapes through sharp teeth.

He's still reeling from the feel of her skin, fleeting as he tried to make it. (He still has nightmares about Rory being pulled into the crack, about Amy's wild hysterics — he wakes with face drenched, never sure whether the salt is from his skin or his eyes.) He knows they shouldn't, _he_ shouldn't, and at every turn he seems to hear the Dream Lord's wet-rat whisper.

_Rory's gone._ It's not right. _She doesn't remember._ She does, just not consciously. _What's the harm?_ I'm not screwing her up, too. Not any more.

"Would you come in already, Alien Boy?" she shouts from the waterline, still laughing. "It's not bad, y'know."

"I don't like getting wet!" He winces after he shouts back, wishing it had come out differently. "I react differently to that much salt than you do!"

She runs up to him, breathless. "So you'll have to take an extra shower, so what? Come _on._" She tugs on his hand, their fingers slipping together and apart because of the seawater, and reluctantly he lets her drag him as far as the wash of the waves.

Together they stand, at the point where the sand goes from hot and dusty to damp and cushiony, and look out at the water. It's remarkable, he thinks; he's never played games with the word _forever_, but no matter how many solar systems and galaxies he crosses, _forever_ is what oceans and seas always seem to stretch into.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He would've thought it to be one of his own numerous voices if he hadn't seen her lips move. There's a glimmer in her eyes, something fond and awestruck and a little bit sad. "Never got much to the beach with Aunt Sharon. Was the town pool for me, warm spots and all." She laughs a little. "Crazy, isn't it, though? How much there is?"

He can't help smiling. Right here, watching those green-bronze pupils swell like the waves to take it all in, he thinks that she is undeniably the sea — one whose tides seem to push and pull on him alone. "If you think this is _much,_ Amelia, I've been taking you to all the wrong places."

"You've been holding out on me!" she accuses, shoving him playfully.

Or she must have thought it was playful — instead he goes tripping over his own boots, palms scraping against wet sand and just avoiding a full-on face plant.

As she laughs and he wipes the sand-salt stains from his pants, his coat, his neck even, he decides that he is still afraid of forever.

But maybe a fraction less.


End file.
